MySQL supports a wide range of data types, which determine how MySQL will store your data. Any one of multiple data types can be used to store a piece of data, but which one is optimal?
Archive for the ‘Website Development’ Category
Choosing an Optimal MySQL Data Type
Posted January 11th, 2010 by Barnaby Knowles in Website Development
CSS 2: Making the Most of Web Development Tools
Posted December 23rd, 2009 by Chrisi Reid in Content Management, Miscellaneous, Web Design, Web Standards, Website Development
Some time back, my colleague Dan posted a blog about CSS 3, and all of the wonderful new ways web design will change once browsers catch up to the new standards. Many of the new techniques and tools do work in certain browsers now, but what can a web development team do to create pages that have some of the look and feel provided by CSS 3 for browsers like Internet Explorer that don’t support it?
The Future of PHP : A Brief Look at PHP 6
Posted December 21st, 2009 by Barnaby Knowles in Website Development
PHP, or PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, is one of the most widely used scripting languages. Although originally designed for website development, PHP has evolved massively and can now also be run from the command line interface and can be used in standalone graphical applications.
The current major version is PHP 5.3, released in June 2009. The next milestone in the evolution of PHP is PHP 6, which has been in development for a number of years. PHP 6 will introduce new features, improve existing ones, and remove others.
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Special Characters in HTML with PHP’s htmlspecialchars() Function
Posted December 8th, 2009 by Barnaby Knowles in Content Management, Website Development
Introduction
Certain characters should not be used as plain text in HTML markup but should instead be represented by their respective HTML entities in order to preserve their meanings. When writing HTML this is a straightforward process – you type the HTML entity rather than the special character. But what happens when you have some plain text containing these characters (out of a database, for example) that you need to display? PHP has a function that will take a string and convert special characters to their HTML entities for you.
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The Future of the Web: Brief intro to HTML 5
Posted November 27th, 2009 by Neil Stewart in Usability, Web Design, Website Development
Some designers will embrace its arrival, others will simply dismiss its existence but the fact of the matter is that new technology in the web arena is becoming ever more apparent. “It’s too far in the future” some may scream, but either way we have all heard the hype around the next best thing in web development HTML 5.
Although it’s a big leap in what many designers are used to, it is something that all designers must accept will happen in the future. So why not learn the ins and outs of mark up such as HTML 5? Knowing something of this kind will not hinder your progress as a designer, simply give you the upper hand when “d day “ does come around and XHTML is something of the past. (more…)
Website Redirects on LAMP Hosting
Posted November 26th, 2009 by Barnaby Knowles in Website Development
You might want to redirect web pages or even your entire website for one reason or another. Perhaps you changed the name or location of a web page, you changed from HTML to PHP file extensions, you changed your domain name… the list goes on. Luckily there are many different ways in which you can set up redirects in a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) web hosting environment.
CSS 3: New Tools For Web Designers
Posted November 25th, 2009 by Daniel Fielding in Usability, Web Design, Web Standards, Website Development
CSS is used in web design to define the way your pages are presented. It’s a styling language first standardised in 1996 as a way to give designers more power and reduce the complexity of HTML documents. Before its creation, all aspects of page appearance such as colours, sizes, borders and spacing were part of the HTML mark-up. This meant that even simple pages quickly became a large mess of code and the same statements had to be repeated over and over throughout a website.
The idea behind CSS is that it separates the presentational code from the content, so that HTML documents can remain clean and simple with multiple documents all pulling their styles from a single CSS file. This allows pages to be built quicker, with less repetition, and makes any future maintenance or design changes much easier. (more…)
Writing Text That Sells
Posted November 25th, 2009 by Chrisi Reid in Usability, Website Development
Trying to write the copy for product or service pages can be confusing at times.
You might not always know whether a specific section should be a hard-hitting sales pitch – or simple and direct, something to help your reader navigate through your site. Knowing how to use headlines and body text – and when to ease up on the sales speech – can help you create much more helpful product text.
Smarter and faster web design
Posted November 18th, 2009 by Neil Stewart in Web Design, Website Development
Many designers believe the only way to reach your goals is to work harder and longer on a given project. This, to many, is paramount although to others simply working “smarter” usually has a more satisfying result in the long run, whether this is simply choosing the right tools or the best plan of attack when looking at a new project. Many designers get clouded by the curse of diving straight into a project, especially if the brief in hand is ideal to your set skills. This blog will hopefully enlighten you to the proper and decent forms of planning a successful, fast and at times enjoyable project. (more…)
Reducing Form Spam Without the Use of a CAPTCHA
Posted November 16th, 2009 by Barnaby Knowles in Security, Website Development
The problem of form spam
Form spam is a growing problem for webmasters. Through our “contact us” feedback forms we’ve all received the ubiquitous emails advertising everything from the little blue pill to cut-price designer timepieces. Bloggers will also be used to receiving lots of comments linking back to the poster’s own website or advertising various wares. The vast majority of this form spam is automated, meaning that a bot comes along and submits the form rather than a human being.
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